The Story of Narrative Preaching: Experience and Exposition: A Narrative

By Mike Graves

Forty years ago the one thing that could be said about sermons was they were biblical. Unfortunately, they were sometimes tedious too. Narrative preaching aimed to fix that, advocating for a dynamic experience of the text over against a static lecture. Preaching could be like the parables of Jesus, intriguing and compelling.

The Story of Narrative Preaching is the story of seven students who are enrolled in Professor Freeman's preaching course. Once a new trend, narrative preaching is now older than most of them. As Professor Freeman notes, two things went wrong with narrative styles: over time the church became biblically and theologically illiterate, and the promised stress on experience didn't always measure up to the weight of the gospel.

Readers are invited to sit in on the class, to reflect on the expositional nature of preaching and to experience the stories of some modern storytellers--Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, and others--to see what they might teach us about narratives of depth. In the end we discover what may be the most important word in preaching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781630878993

Mike Graves

Mike Graves is the Wm. K. McElvaney Professor of Preaching and Worship at Saint Paul School of Theology and Scholar-in-Residence at Country Club Christian Church, both in the greater Kansas City area. He is the author of The Sermon as Symphony (1997), The Fully Alive Preacher (2006), and The Story of Narrative Preaching (2015). www.drmikegraves.com

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The Story of Narrative Preaching

Experience and Exposition A Narrative

Mike Graves

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The Story of Narrative Preaching

Experience and Exposition A Narrative

Copyright © 2015 Mike Graves. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-62032-873-6

EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-899-3

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Graves, Mike.

The story of narrative preaching : experience and exposition : a narrative / Mike Graves.

x + 234 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 13: 978-1-62032-873-6

1. Narrative preaching. 2. Storytelling—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.

BV4235.S76 G38 2015

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 11/05/2014

For Cassandra and Brock, and all the others—

my students, my teachers, my muses.

Preaching should have of all things the very closest relationship to existing.

—Søren Kierkegaard

Acknowledgments

For some reason this book took me longer than any of my others to write, and it’s on short stories of all things. Don’t ask me why; I can’t explain it. What I can explain is how grateful I am to all who helped me on the journey. John Holbert got me started on the journey, although he probably doesn’t know it. Back when he was teaching at the Perkins School of Theology in Dallas he wrote an exploratory article on preaching and short stories, a topic I don’t think he ever came back to, and yet one from which I could not get away. Thanks, John.

After that, there was the invitation from Tom Long, whose homiletical fingerprints seem to be on everything I do. He asked me how I planned to spend my next sabbatical, and then graciously invited me to spend it at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. He, along with the staff, faculty colleagues, and the students, especially Samantha Lewis, were supportive beyond words. Sabbaticals are a gift, and this one was graciously granted by the board of trustees at the Saint Paul School of Theology, where I am privileged to serve with wonderful faculty colleagues and a gifted staff. Of course, I learned narrative preaching from Fred Craddock and Gene Lowry. Didn’t we all?

Along the way there was a reading group with pastors who met to talk about the preaching values to be found in short stories, many of who served as cheerleaders to me, especially Robert Fugarino, Marcus McFaul, and Joanna Harader. My students were always an inspiration, partly because of the work they did but also the questions they asked. They kept me honest and practical. Two student assistants went the extra mile, and without them I don’t think this work would have ever come to completion: Trista Sondker Nicholson and Michelle Byerly.

As always, nothing I do ever gets done without the support of my two best friends: David May and Lynn Horak. Lastly, I am forever grateful to my wife, Carol, who hesitated only briefly when I brought up a sabbatical in Atlanta while she kept things running on the home front in Kansas City. You are a gift of God.

Author’s Note

All stories are true, which is not to say that all stories are factual. The events and characters in this story are part factual, part fictional. They are, however, completely true.

Excerpt(s) from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi, copyright © 2002 by Azar Nafisi. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House LLC for permission.

Revelation from The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor, copyright © 1971 by the Estate of Mary Flannery O’Connor. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

The Pure in Heart by Peggy Payne, copyright © 1986. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Welcome Table from In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, by Alice Walker. Copyright © 1973 by Alice Walker. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

It Happened in Israel

It happened in Israel. Preachers are always saying that, right? Not in so many words, no; but in one way or another, yes. Maybe it’s while telling the story of prophets pleading on behalf of God, or each spring describing Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The Bible is chock-full of stories that happened in Israel, and so naturally preachers tell lots of stories that in one way or another begin, It happened in Israel. Well, that’s where this one begins as well.

My New Testament colleague and I led a ten-day trip to the Holy Land late last May. David had been many times before, including an extended stay one summer at an archaeological dig in Banias, also known as Caesarea Philippi at another point in its history. He wasn’t exactly Indiana Jones, but he knew his way around. Me, this was my first trip, so I was more than a little nervous—not about the ongoing Middle East tension but about co-leading when I’d never been to Israel before. David told me to relax. He reminded me we had an excellent guide lined up, a Palestinian Christian, also by the name of David, and I had my colleague’s experience to rely upon. Besides, he kept telling me, your job is preparing the sermons for our evening devotionals. We had talked about this numerous times and had agreed I would lead the devotional time at the end of each day—prayer, Scripture reading, brief sermon, and communion. Looking at the itinerary ahead of time, I had chosen the Scriptures for each day of the trip, jotted down some sermon ideas, and had planned on ad-libbing depending on what happened each day.

What I had never anticipated in the Holy Land, and if you’ve never been, there’s just no way to plan for it, were the stark juxtapositions between the ancient and modern. They should warn you on the plane about the juxtapositions you will encounter. Shortly after reviewing safety procedures and how disabling smoke detectors is a felony, they should tell you about the juxtapositions. The contrast between ancient and modern is palpable, whether it be the architecture (Wailing Wall and Marriott Hotels), the clothing (tunics and Nikes), or any number of cultural customs too numerous to name. When you are in the Holy Land, you feel like any minute King David might issue an edict, and post it on the wall of his Facebook page no less, assuming the Wi-Fi is up and running.

On the third day of the trip two juxtapositions occurred. The first was seeing one of those wells so famously described in Scripture, like where Jacob first fell in love with Rachel, and where much later Jesus encountered the woman from Samaria. It’s hard to conjure up images of these wells if you’ve never seen one firsthand. They look nothing like the kind where Timmy falls in and Lassie comes to the rescue, oaken bucket on a rope and pulley, pitched roof overhead. Nope, not even close. Jacob’s well, or most any well in Israel for that matter, is a hole in the ground with a stone over it. You feel like you’ve stepped back in time. Only not exactly, because next to all these ancient wells there is usually a bucket like you’d find at Walmart, the brightly colored plastic ones kids use while digging on a beach in Florida. The ancient and modern side by side. That was the first juxtaposition.

The second juxtaposition happened later that afternoon. Tuesday evening I was going to preach from John 4, Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at that well. The sermon was pretty much ready, inspired in part by a sermon I’d heard Gene Lowry preach years ago. But earlier that day a book fell out of my backpack while I was looking for my digital camera. A friend had given me a collection of short stories to read on the plane, even if I’d chosen to sleep on the cross-Atlantic flight instead. She said it was the kind of book I’d love, stories that preachers would find interesting. Those were her words, stories that preachers would find interesting.

Of course I find stories interesting—I’m a preacher—and different kinds of stories, too. I like the stories my granddad used to tell about his childhood in Canada. I like the ones my friends and I told around campfires when we were kids, trying to scare each other. Even as an adult, I still like fables from different cultures. I love a good novel, even if I usually only get around to novels during the summer. I wish I could say I like the illustrations preachers tell, and some of them I do; but far too often the stories preachers tell are as weak as chicken broth compared to chicken soup. Don’t even get me started on Chicken Soup for the Preacher’s Soul or whatever volumes are out there. So often, preacher’s illustrations don’t measure up. The idea that this was a book of stories that preachers would find interesting didn’t really excite me. So that day in Israel I flipped it open to the table of contents with a healthy dose of cynicism. The name Alice Walker caught my eye, the author of the novel The Color Purple. Only this was a short story called The Welcome Table. My cynicism melted in minutes.

Words cannot describe what happened to me on that sunny afternoon in Israel as I read Walker’s story. I took the book and went across the street, where I sat outside a little café called Hillel, named after one of Israel’s great rabbis who even influenced Jesus. I ate falafel but devoured Alice Walker’s story. Other than the Gospel stories, I had never read anything quite so powerful and so brief at the same time. Dynamite in small packages, right?

Then it happened, right there in Israel. Walker’s story, it seemed to me, was a modern-day woman at the well story. Not exactly, of course. Nothing is ever exactly the same, but this short story was definitely in the same spirit as John’s story. So I decided to retell the two stories as part of my evening sermon. I would put them together like the plastic bucket next to an ancient well. If I had had the time, I would have typed out the sermon at a nearby Internet café, but I reconstructed it later and preached a similar version in the States. On that spring day in Israel, the sermon went something like this:

Did you hear John’s opening lines, He left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria? It doesn’t sound like much on the surface, certainly not Pulitzer Prize material, but it is a masterful opening.

After the last couple of days, our Mediterranean geography is greatly improved, so I probably don’t have to remind you that Judah is in the south, Galilee in the north, and back then Samaria was right between them. Of course Jesus had to go through Samaria. I mean, back home in the Midwest if you want to drive from Iowa to Arkansas, chances are good you’ll pass through Missouri.

Only Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria. Some Jewish travelers did, but many went around. As you well know, Samaritans were considered the lowlifes of society by the Jews. The rabbis said, Better to eat the flesh of swine than to eat Samaritan bread. So when John says Jesus had to, he’s not talking geography, but theology. Jesus had to because there was someone there, someone looking for water. Here’s the story.

Jesus and his disciples journeyed until they came upon a sleepy little town called Sychar. (That’s not on our itinerary, in case you’re wondering.) It was not exactly a tourist spot, although it was the place where Jacob’s well was located, and travelers were always looking for water. Jesus sat down at the well, when a woman from the village came out to draw water. Jesus then struck up a conversation, asking for a drink. The woman was shocked that a Jewish man would even speak to her.

And so was John. Did you notice? John practically sticks his head out of the curtain and interrupts the story. He does. There in parentheses, John tells his readers, Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans, only I think he’s screaming it: Jews Do Not Share Things In Common With Samaritans! John seems to say, Can you believe this?

Not only is she a Samaritan. She’s a she, and the first century was a man’s world. One rabbi claimed, Better to bury the Torah than entrust it to a woman. You saw the movie Yentl, didn’t you? Not only is she a Samaritan and a she, this woman has been married five times. But before you jump to conclusions, may I remind you that women could not file for divorce in this ancient culture. This woman has been abandoned five times. That’s why she draws water at noon, not morning or evening with the other women. She has been shunned. And Jesus strikes up a conversation about water.

I really like what John has done here in how he tells the story, and the best way I know to get at that is through an analogy with da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa. As a friend of mine who teaches art history once showed me, you have to look in the background. Da Vinci was enamored with the Alps, only they are in the background of his painting. Those glorious mountains pale in comparison to Mona Lisa.

That’s what John does here, and what we see in the background is Nicodemus. Get it? In chapter three we have the story of this man—a Jewish man, with a distinguished name and religious credentials. But he fades into the background here as we behold this nameless Samaritan woman who has suffered much.

And Jesus seeks her out. Nicodemus sought Jesus, but Jesus sought this woman. He had to go through Samaria. Not because he wanted a drink from Jacob’s well. No, because he wanted to give her a drink. He calls it living water, not the wet stuff in her bucket but the kind of drink that satisfies so you never thirst again.

You know what kind of drink she wants, don’t you? Same kind we do when life is hard and we feel isolated and lonely. Same kind of drink we need at the graveside of a loved one, driving home after yet another funeral. Or waiting for the results of that biopsy. Or after discovering you have just been laid off. Same kind of drink that brought us to Jesus in the first place. It’s the water of life, real life. Anybody here feeling parched?

The disciples were shocked when they found Jesus talking with this woman, but I imagine John’s readers were even more shocked. Do you know why? Because they had heard this story before. And so have you. You know, the story about Jacob meeting Rachel at this very well, and marrying her. It is a common theme in biblical stories. As sure as Once upon a time alerts us to fairy tales, stories of a man meeting a woman at a well signaled betrothal. Courtship. Marriage. Get it? Jesus comes in an intimate yet appropriate way to this lonely woman, offering her living water. And what a powerful story!

It reminds me of a story Alice Walker tells, called The Welcome Table. Walker is best known for her novel The Color Purple, which is how I first learned about her. But I’ve just discovered this short story by her, and The Welcome Table is equally powerful. It’s the story of a woman, nameless and black, whom Walker describes as the color of poor gray Georgia earth, beaten by king cotton and the extreme weather.

On this particular fine Sunday morning she starts off to worship at the big white church down the road, a church that is white in many ways. The good religious folks are shocked when she appears. The reverend kindly reminds her this is not her church, as if one could choose the wrong church. The young usher tries as well to persuade her to leave, but she has come to worship God. Finally, the respectable ladies have had enough, and their husbands hurl the poor woman out onto the porch.

She is speechless. Only moments ago she was worshiping God. Then something happens. Listen to how Walker describes it: She started to grin, toothlessly, with short giggles of joy, jumping about and slapping her hands on her knees. And soon it became apparent why she was so happy. For coming down the highway at a firm though leisurely pace was Jesus. As he approaches, he says, Follow me, and without hesitation, she joins him there on the road, although she has no idea where they are headed. She hums. She sings. She tells Jesus all about her troubles. He smiles. Listens and smiles, and the two of them walk on until the ground beneath their feet gives way to clouds and she is truly home! Never alone! Never hungry! Never thirsty!

What a powerful story! Although the title seems odd, The Welcome Table. There’s no table in the story, not a single mention of a table. For that matter, there’s no table in this Gospel story either. Or maybe there is in both stories. Maybe everywhere Jesus goes there is a table. Maybe everywhere that people know pain and great thirst, there is a table with water on it, and wine and bread. And at this table Jesus smiles. Smiles and listens. Amen.

We sat there in silence for a minute or two, and then had communion. I did something similar the next day, and every day after that. I was hooked. One evening I paired Jesus’ temptation story with Stephen King’s The Man in the Black Suit. Yes, that Stephen King, only this is such a departure from his norm. I paired Peggy Payne’s The Pure in Heart with the burning bush in Exodus. You get the idea.

The people loved the sermons, or maybe it was the rush that comes from traveling through Israel, but these experiments in narrative juxtaposition were powerful, especially for me as the preacher. I couldn’t wait to read another story each day, to pair it with a text, and share it with our group. I figured out fairly quickly that not every short story out there will preach, but a lot of them do.

On the plane ride home, a day that never seems to end, I devoured several more short stories. After finishing A Father’s Story by Andre Dubus, a story that defies explanation, I told David, These things are modern narrative sermons. Not all of them, but many of them for sure. They are powerful beyond description. He looked up from the book he was reading and smiled. I remembered how Fred Craddock compared narrative sermons to short stories, calling them cousins. I closed the book and my eyes, and began to think about the course I would be teaching the following spring semester, an elective on narrative preaching. I said, David, sorry to keep interrupting. But what do you think about a course on narrative preaching that uses modern short stories paired with biblical stories?

He said, Dr. Freeman, I think if the idea excites you, it has a better chance of exciting your students. And we all know how important that is. That’s what I think.

Even if he had thrown water on the flames of my little Pentecost, I’m pretty sure I would have plunged ahead anyway. So that’s what happened, and as I said, it happened in Israel. Even on that flight I knew that one of the first things I would do in that class would be to pass out copies of Walker’s short story. Turns out, I passed out several short stories that semester. I thought these stories might be just the antidote for so much dry preaching I’d been hearing lately. Turns out, they were only part of the big picture of my rethinking of narrative preaching.

Chapter Two

Shedding the Veil

The first day of the spring semester I announced, Finally, a preaching course with the perfect number of students. They assumed I meant seven as in the number for God, and that’s partly what I meant. But in the past I’d had so many elective courses in which there were too many students for us to be intimate—seventeen or eighteen, sometimes twenty or more. Deans and registrars like big classes; and I like students, too, don’t get me wrong. But in my experience preaching electives are best when smaller. This time around six would have been fine, even eight, maybe nine. The course just needed to be intimate.

PRE 430, The Story of Narrative Preaching, is a class I teach every couple of years or so, but never before like this. Every time I taught the course previously there was a slightly different focus, enough so that I’d had one or two students take it more than once. This time the lens would be short stories. I did a lot of reading after the trip to Israel, and I was convinced that short stories and narrative preaching really were cousins. Authors such as John Updike and Flannery O’Connor who weren’t narrative preachers in the strictest sense but whose stories have deep resonances with the gospel, would join the likes of Barbara Brown Taylor, Gene Lowry, and Tom Long in teaching us how to preach narratively.

Reading great literature—short stories or otherwise—struck me as an endeavor requiring intimacy, so seven really was the perfect number. I thought the course should be intimate as well, including the space. The registrar had assigned us a room that would work, but it wasn’t ideal. For starters, it had fluorescent lights, the standard of academia everywhere. If possible, no one should read Scripture and literature under those glowing tubes; chemistry textbooks maybe. The room was also more traditional in layout, rows of chairs facing a desk up front. If I had my way, we would be meeting at the Starbucks down the street, that little nook in the corner by the fireplace, the one with plump leather chairs, and the kind of place where you keep bumping into humanity in all its glory. There were a few windows in the classroom, not enough for sure, and many of them hazy between the panes of glass. In the winter they looked warm and cozy, but other times of the year they looked in need of repair.

Short of meeting in a coffee shop, I thought the perfect room on campus was one of those private conference rooms in the library. With some persuading, we were allowed to switch. The McElvaney Conference Room is appointed with a gorgeous oak table with space for a dozen or so folks, and comfortable armchairs on wheels. Even the carpet gives the room a degree of warmth. I think it’s one of the breakout spaces the board of trustees uses when meeting on campus. At the head of the room a thin wooden cabinet is mounted, opening up to reveal a whiteboard and markers. If it were in someone’s finished basement, it would contain a dartboard. On the opposite wall a nicely framed commemorative poster celebrates the illuminated St. John’s Bible. Floor-to-ceiling windows make up the wall on the left, with a view of the seminary’s prayer garden, and beyond that some woods. The wall on the right features two Vincent Van Gogh prints, both of them variations on sunflowers. Between the two prints a plaque gives the name of each piece, as well as a quote by Van Gogh, who started out as a minister himself: This much I want to tell you—while painting, I feel a power of color in me that I did not possess before, things of broadness and strength. That seemed like a good thought for budding preachers—broadness, strength, and beauty. I told my students how lucky we were, that environment isn’t everything but it counts for a lot when thinking about literature and Scripture, or preaching for that matter. I said, If we weren’t in a library, I’d have candles on the table.

Fat chance, but how about wine and cheese? joked Cassandra.

Now that would be perfect, I said. The students knew alcohol isn’t allowed on campus at the Saint Paul School of Theology, but I teased them that we might just have to meet at a restaurant from time to time, where drinks and good food could help with ambiance. Everyone looked pleasantly surprised, like this could be a very different seminary experience. And that was precisely my hope. I think narrative sermons should be a very different experience as well.

As we got underway I said, Before we get to the syllabus and assignments, it would be helpful to hear each other’s stories, especially in relation to narrative preaching and literature since that will be the lens by which we look at narrative preaching this semester. I realize most of you know each other but not necessarily all that well. One of my preaching professors used to say that critiquing each other’s sermons is like looking through a person’s underwear drawer. A few of them giggled nervously.

I said, If that’s true of sermons, it’s equally true of talking about literature and how you feel about it. We have to trust each other. As you introduce yourselves, say something about your relationship with narrative preaching and your relationship with literature. Or maybe another way to say it, using Facebook lingo, what’s your status with preaching and literature? Cassandra was the first person to my left, a beautiful young woman of Egyptian descent, and always dressed to the nines. I said, Why don’t you start us off?

She sat even more upright and said, I’m Cassandra Samir. As some of you know, my parents moved from Cairo to Peoria, Illinois, shortly before I was born. We are a Christian family from many generations back, and we find the United States an accepting place for the most part. I attended the University of Illinois, where I majored in English. A few of her peers mumbled how that’s not fair. She laughed it off. I love literature, especially poetry and short stories. Before I could say anything or put a star by her name in the grade book, she added, Preaching and sermons, however, scare the bejesus out of me. Everyone laughed a knowing laugh.

I said, Preaching and fear do seem to go hand in hand, which probably explains why the first words of Easter—even before the good news of Christ’s resurrection—are ‘be not afraid.’ They had heard me say this in a previous class, I was sure, but some messages should be repeated regularly.

Joey Lawson, who was seated next to Cassandra, cleared his throat. His OU Sooners cap sat backwards on his head. Joey is not only a sports fan but also an athlete himself, even if slight in stature. He said, I’m not gonna lie. This class fit my schedule. I’ve already had my New Testament elective, which meets at the same time, so it was this or watch ESPN on Thursday evenings.

You mean my class beat out your Sooners?

He said, Something like that, I guess. He told us that he was serving a small rural church near the little town of Kearney, on the Missouri side of the state line, so preaching had become an every-week kind of thing. Newly minted ministers often find that a sobering experience. Joey admitted he liked preaching but also that he was highly skeptical of using short stories in sermons. He was not alone.

Next was Lisa, who grew up in Kansas and majored in art history at the University of Kansas. A small-framed young woman, she struck me as someone who had yet to tap into her artistic flair for homiletical purposes, like she was still trying to mimic the male pastors she’d grown up hearing. A year earlier, in the introductory course, I had them do an informal assignment of sorts, the completion of a sentence, To me, preaching a sermon is like . . . I noted how it’s both personal (to me) and metaphorical (is like). I also told them it could be the kind of assignment that takes a lifetime to complete. Lisa had shared, To me, preaching a sermon is like leading a Bible study. It was a fine enough answer, I guess, but I couldn’t help thinking she had more to offer.

She said, My name is Lisa Stewart, and I’m in my final semester. A mixture of cheers and boos went up. Yeah, I had to throw that in. I don’t know if I’m a narrative preacher or not. I’m not sure I’m really a preacher for that matter. I like stories in general, although I don’t know if I’ve really read any short stories per se. But I’m intrigued by the course. She looked down nervously, or it felt that way to me.

At the opposite end of the table sat Carlos Alvarez, and to his left, his wife Rosa. They are originally from Guatemala, but were serving an inner-city mission in a largely Hispanic part of Kansas City. Carlos said he knew a great place on Southwest Boulevard where we could eat enchiladas and drink margaritas for one of our field trips. Rosa added, Our real passion, besides food, is justice ministries. As I recall, Rosa didn’t say much of anything about preaching or literature, although Carlos stressed the centrality of the Bible and wanting to be better at proclaiming the word of God.

Seated next to Rosa was Brock Parker. He is a second-career seminarian, originally from Texas, which annoyed the Sooner Joey right off. Brock smiled but said he didn’t really care about sports. He is a heavy-set fellow, who was a truck driver for the first half of his life. He said the only thing harder than the asphalt was life itself, which sounded to me like the chorus to a country and western song. Brock said he’d been divorced twice, and was now living in a double-wide trailer in the country where his grandkids from the first marriage sometimes came to visit. "I love preaching God’s word. Anybody that knows me knows that. And I